Fermented & preserved
Sake no Yakizuke
Sake no yakizuke — grilled salmon steeped in a soy-based sauce
A Murakami dish of plain-grilled salmon steeped in a soy-based sauce. Said to have begun as a preservation method before refrigeration existed, it stays soft and tender even after cooling.
- Origin: Niigata Murakami
- About 280 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Lightly grilled salmon is steeped for a good while in a fragrant soy-based sauce made with sake and mirin. The soaking makes up for the leanness that plain grilled salmon can lack, letting the sauce's savory depth work its way into the flesh. Its flavor is entirely different from salted or simmered salmon, and even cold, the flesh stays soft and tender rather than turning firm, which is said to be its defining trait.
How it's made
Sake and mirin are reduced and combined with soy sauce to make the sauce. Cut pieces of salmon are lightly grilled, then steeped in the sauce while still hot. It can be eaten as is once well seasoned, though a quick reheat in a microwave or over a grill brings out even more aroma. Because it can be made ahead in a larger batch and kept steeping, it has long been valued as a ready-made side dish.
Why it took this shape
In an age before refrigeration technology, this method of grilling the fish first and then steeping it in sauce is said to have developed as a way to preserve the large autumn salmon catch for eating over time. In this region, where every part of the salmon swimming upriver, head to tail, has long been used with care, steeping it this way took hold widely as a means of making the leaner flesh taste its best.
Dishes in the same style
- Achara ZukeWhite melon, eggplant, and lotus root are pickled in a sweet vinegar spiked with red chili — the name is said to trace to the Portuguese 'achar', carried in through Hakata Bay's old trade, and an odd number of vegetables is used for Obon hospitality.
- AhodakiOld takuan pickle, once its flavor and aroma have faded, is desalted and simmered again in soy sauce, a pantry staple from the Hokusei area. Its name — playfully self-deprecating, roughly "doing a foolish thing" — nods to eating it well past its prime, a frugal way to waste nothing.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Niigata
- AnboA Chuetsu-region dish of steamed rice-flour dumplings filled with sweet bean paste, pickled greens or eggplant. Similar in spirit to Nagano's oyaki but distinguished by its rice-flour skin, reflecting land suited to rice rather than wheat.
- Echigo misoA red, savory miso from Niigata, also called 'ukikoji miso' (floating-koji miso) because its polished whole-grain rice koji appears to float within the paste. Its style is said to vary across Niigata's Joetsu, Chuetsu, Kaetsu, and Sado districts, each shaped by local climate.
- Fugu no Ko no KasuzukeA rare Sado delicacy in which puffer fish ovaries are salt-cured for two years or more, then aged for a long stretch in Sado's sake lees. Only ovaries processed by licensed fugu chefs are sold, and the practice is said to date back to the Edo period.
- Fukashi NasuA Niigata dish of kinchaku eggplant halved, steamed, chilled and eaten with mustard or ginger soy sauce. In a prefecture among Japan's top eggplant producers, it is said to have been valued as a cooling dish through the summer.
- Hegi SobaA soba from Ojiya, Niigata, that uses funori seaweed, the same binder once used to size thread for the region's textiles, as a noodle binder. It is arranged in small bite-sized portions on a wooden box called a hegi.
- Hiyashijiru Miso JitateA chilled soup from the Chuetsu region, dashi thinned with miso and studded with chopped cucumber and shiso. Devised to stay appetizing through the summer heat, it is said to be eaten on its own or poured over rice or noodles.